Monday, August 11, 2014

Corporate Profits vs American Public and Minimum Wage

".........Raising the minimum wage increases the standard of living for workers at the bottom of the pay scale and saves taxpayers costs associated with public assistance programs, such as food stamps. The majority of food stamps go to the working poor.

The liberal Center for American Progress found that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour nationally would save taxpayers $4.6 billion in spending on food stamps alone.

Under the current minimum wage, highly profitable companies such as Walmart tell workers to apply for food stamps so they can afford to eat. Walmart and other minimum-wage-paying companies argue that if they had to pay employees a livable wage, then consumers’ prices would rise.

That argument amounts to a strange form of socialism whereby government protects the uber -rich from having to pay the cost of doing business and protects consumers from having to pay the actual cost of goods. We find it disturbingly hypocritical that conservatives rail that individuals should live from the fruit of their labor and not from government handouts, yet they support a minimum-wage policy that forces government to pick up the costs of private business in order to maintain corporate profits and hold down consumer prices. (A UC-Berkeley study on the effect of raising the minimum wage to $12 found that the average shopping trip to Walmart would cost 46 cents more and the average cost of a Big Mac would rise by a dime.).................."

"The average salary for Major League Baseball players was $3.39 million last year. The current minimum is $500,000.

"A class-action lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball claims that players in the minor leagues are not paid fairly.

Double-A players, such as those on the Portland Sea Dogs, can expect a salary of $7,500 – $1,500 a month from opening day through season’s end. That’s well shy of the federal poverty level for a single person of $11,670. Their work week can stretch to 70 hours and their scheduled off days can include hours of bus travel........."

The arguments against raising the minimum wage don’t hold up to facts.

Aren’t most people who work for minimum wage teens?

No– 88 percent are adults, with more than a third over age 40. These workers earn half of their families’ incomes. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009.

C’mon, you don’t get an education, it’s your own fault you work for minimum wage, right?

Wrong. The percentage of low-wage workers with at least some college education spiked 71 percent since 1979, to 43.2 percent today. You didn’t ask, but adult (re)training programs don’t seem to help much.

O.K., I feel for those people. But won’t higher wages cause higher prices?

The way you functionally subsidize companies paying low-wages to workers– ponying up the difference between what McDonald’s and others pay and what those workers need to live via taxpayer-paid SNAP (food stamps) and other benefits– is a hidden cost in plain sight. You’re already paying higher prices via higher taxes; you just may not know it.